Detroit Free Press Business Columnist

On Saturday Nov. 30, amid the sea of rabid fans outside the Big House for the Michigan-Ohio State showdown, one tailgate party will bring together an unlikely team of rivals forged between the Columbus and Ann Arbor offices of Vaco, a national staffing firm for information technology and financial professionals.

The bond between the two offices dates back to a non-compete clause that led to Ann Arbor natives Paul Bishop and Jerrett Eiler commuting to Columbus starting in March 2011, when they left another staffing firm to join Vaco, a Nashville-based outfit with 28 offices.

Bishop and Eiler couldn’t work in the staffing industry within 75 miles of their prior employer’s Ann Arbor office for two years — so they signed on to set up a new Ohio office for Vaco in Columbus, with the understanding they’d return to Michigan after the two years. That happened in April.

We talked last week with Bishop and Eiler, both 37 and now partners in the Vaco Detroit office, based in Ann Arbor. Subjects included the experience of two diehard Wolverine fans working in the heart of Buckeye-land for two years.

Question: Did you guys get a lot of grief down in Columbus when people found out where you were from?

Eiler: It was two years of mental and verbal abuse, getting razzed here and there, but for the most part we had a good time with it. Columbus is actually a great Midwest town with very good people. Once you get past that initial, “Oh you’re from Michigan ...,” people were very welcoming. We became known as the Michigan guys ... and we gained a lot of clients because of it. People respected our courage and appreciated the fact that we were very open about it. It was fun, a good experience for sure — but I’m glad I’m back home.

Q: You two aren’t actually University of Michigan grads, right, you went to Eastern Michigan?

Bishop: Right, but I’ve been going to Michigan football games since I was 6 years old. I actually have the same season tickets in my name today that were in our family’s name back then. And with my family being Ann Arborites, being a Michigan fan was not a choice, it was mandatory.

Q: What attracted you about Vaco that you would sign on to commute down to Columbus for three days every week?

Bishop: Vaco has a unique structure that focuses on local ownership, meaning that each individual market is its own LLC, with the parent company backing it with shared services — back office, payroll, legal. So Vaco, not only does it have a large brand backing you, but it also has local ownership.

Eiler: We’re both somewhat entrepreneurial at heart, and this was able to feed that hunger of ours.

Q: So you set up the Columbus office, grew it to 10 people and then came back home to Ann Arbor’s similar-sized office. And everybody was OK with that?

Eiler: It was never our long-term plan to stay down there. We had the non-compete to get out of, and it was a long enough period that it allowed us to really grow something and see it through its first two years. About 18 months in, we started hiring folks to take over during that transition, to make sure they were in good hands.

Bishop: Our corporate people were familiar with this. A lot of people in our business have non-competes, so you have to get creative at times to work around those, and this was one of those work-arounds.

Q: So this week you are hosting some of your former Columbus colleagues and clients in Ann Arbor?

Eiler: Yes, we’re going to be having quite the tailgate the day of the game with 10 or 12 people coming up from Columbus. We did make some good friendships and relationships — and just like they treated us to a nice tailgate last year, we’re going to do the same for them. But it’s definitely still a rivalry.